Dad may have been a gangster, but to us he was a perfect man

CHARLIE RICHARDSON was one of Britain’s most notorious gangsters, jailed for 25 years for extortion, fraud, assault and grievous bodily harm. Yet when David Meikle, the co-writer of his biography, talks to his daughters they say that he was always 'a dad in a million' to them

FAMILY MAN: Charlie with his children Charlie Boy, Michelle, Susan, Mark and Carol [PH]

Carol Richardson flicked through photo albums as a range of emotions changed her expression every few seconds. She cried, then she laughed; buried her head in her hands and then stared into space.

The eldest daughter of notorious gangster Charlie Richardson was remembering her father’s birthday and paying her own tribute to the man she loved with all her heart.

“Our dad was no angel,” she told me, still clutching a pile of family pictures, “but a lot of the stuff about him was a load of nonsense. He was a good father. No one could have been a better father.

“He wrote letter after letter from prison. We have hundreds of letters and would never part with them. It chokes me when he talks about his daily prison routine and how much our visits meant to him.

“He was such a good dad, even behind bars, because he would always want all the news from home and he gave us all the best advice about school. If we didn’t do our homework he wanted a full report on why not.”

Carol’s voice trembled slightly as she spoke; she picked up a letter from a pile at least a foot high. “Dad was so proud of us,” she beamed. “Look, this one says I could achieve anything if I wanted to, and he goes on about studying hard for my exams. Look at this one thanking me for his Father’s Day card.”

STORY TIME: Charlie with his granddaughters Charisse and Danielle [Charlie-Richardson-The-last-Gangster-family-photo]

Why did he have to serve 18 years inside? Why did they have to make an example of him?

I stayed silent for a moment to let Carol regain her composure. “He didn’t even know it was Father’s Day. No one in the prison told him it was Father’s Day.”

Her youngest sister, Sue, said Charlie had an amazing intellect and could hold his own in any company: “I always knew that Dad was a very clever man. Maybe he grew up on the wrong side of the fence. I remember people saying he was so sharp that he could have been a top banker. Honestly, he had a brilliant mind and could sort out a good deal in minutes.”

I played recordings of Charlie, who died in September 2012, describing key moments in his life, published in The Last Gangster, and I could see tears appearing again. Then Carol became angry.

“Why did he have to serve 18 years inside? Why did they have to make an example of him? Look at all these politicians getting away with all their fiddles. Why were we deprived of our dad for such a long time?”

I asked what were her favourite memories of her father, knowing that would help her to calm down.

“He was very inspirational. If you were feeling low or down you could just talk to him for five minutes and you would feel that you could conquer the world. He told us to bite off more than we could chew and keep chewing.

“We used to go to Dymchurch in Kent where there was a nice beach. We had picnics and loved playing in the sand with our dad.”

Michelle, the middle sister, smiled. “We also went to Petticoat Lane Market in the East End. You could buy anything there. We sometimes bought animals and came home one day with a goat. It ate all Dad’s paperwork.

“We used to spend Christmas at the house of Dad’s brother, Uncle Eddie. They were happy times and the two brothers were always playing tricks on us. Dad enjoyed buying things in joke shops.”

I moved Carol on to the darker years: “My worst memory is his arrest on World Cup final day in 1966 when the police charged all over the house. Reading that chapter in the book is a painful experience for all of us. We weren’t aware of the bad things. We just knew he was a businessman and he was kept busy with work.”

Michelle became upset as she recalled the daily nightmare of going to school: “Children were so horrible during the trial,” she said. “We were being punished. Even teachers’ attitudes towards us changed. The torture gang stuff was all in the papers [the Richardson gang was accused of extreme violence involving bolt cutters and electric shocks towards those who crossed them] and the other kids taunted us.”

Carol remembered: “Me and my brother Charlie Boy didn’t even go to school for a long time. We pretended to go but bunked off because we couldn’t stand the cruel jibes. To make matters worse, parents told their children not to play with us.”

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The three daughters, now in their 50s, said The Last Gangster biography showed another side to their father. Michelle pointed out he had campaigned for better conditions in jails. Sue chipped in with his efforts to educate prisoners in the Open University.

I wondered what it was like for the children to be taken to high security prisons all over the country to visit their father.

“His mum and her sister, Auntie Doll, took us everywhere from Parkhurst to Durham,” Carol said. “They bought a minibus to ferry us around and we had to leave in the early hours of the morning. We took pillows, blankets and a change of clothes. We always looked smart for Dad.

“They were massive prisons with huge wooden doors. We were searched and that made us feel like bad people.

“Visitors were segregated, too, because we had come to see a Category A prisoner. Sometimes he was behind glass and other times we were allowed to sit beside him but he was not allowed to comfort or touch us. I remember once when a couple of us started crying but he wasn’t allowed to hold us. The warder came over and dragged us away from him. Dad pleaded his case but to no avail. Maybe they thought we would smuggle something in.”

Charlie Richardson’s daughters recalled taking in LPs, books and shirts. They could only show the gifts to him and then had to hand them over to a warder for checking.

I was keen to know what happened to the relationships when Charlie disappeared from an open prison. “Well, Dad had the ability to fix anything,” Carol pointed out. “When he was on the run he even came to Jersey to see me. I was on holiday there, had a miscarriage, and he visited me in hospital. He found ways of keeping in touch.”

Carol said Charlie was recaptured and finally released from prison in 1984. He moved in with his mother, a changed man.

“When Dad went away we were all young children. When he came home, aged about 50, we were married and had children of our own. It was hard for Dad to get his head around. He used to be our protector but things changed because he needed help to adjust. He wanted us to be children again.

“We even wanted to be those little children again, to recapture those lost years. He called my daughter Carol because she was the spitting image of me. Those 18 years in prison were such a waste for our family.

“One positive note was that he met his second wife, Ronnie, the love of his life, and a fantastic addition to our family.”

Charlie Richardson’s three daughters closed the photo albums and bowed their heads. Charlie, the evil gangster, will always be remembered by them as a loving father. “We idolised him,” the three said in turn, “Charlie Richardson was a dad in a million. That will never change.”

Charlie Richardson: The Last Gangster (Century £12.99, Express Books £11.49). To order with free P&P call 0871 988 8451 or visit expressbooks.co.uk. You can also send a cheque or PO (payable to The Express) to: The Express Orders Dept, 1 Broadland Business Park, Norwich, NR7 0WF